


Well, then, I won't tell you a thing

by traumschwinge



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Ableist Language, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other, holocaust mention/implications to the holocaust, time travelesque story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:20:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traumschwinge/pseuds/traumschwinge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For some reason unexplained, Charles can communicate with one of the former owners of his flat. 80 years prior, Erik is having a hard time in mid-1930s Germany. </p><p>You can read Charles/Erik into it, but that's not the point and moot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please be mindful of the difficult topic of this fic. Especially before you comment. I will delete inappropriate comments on this one fic. 
> 
> Many thanks to [Chrysanthemumskies@tumblr](http://chrysanthemumskies.tumblr.com/) for the quick and good beta.

Charles entered his living room with a book and a mug of tea in hand. He paused, once he'd opened the door. There was somebody sitting in the armchair by one wall, enraptured in reading his own book. Charles closed the door behind himself as quietly as he could. He didn't want to disturb the reader. The last time Erik had noticed him enter, he had looked at him as if he'd seen a ghost and left, not coming back for hours.

Charles carefully put his tea down on the couch table and sat down on his couch, hiding behind his own book. If Erik was here to talk, he would say something. If he wasn't Charles was content with reading as he had planned to anyway.

Charles was able to read four pages before Erik took notice of him. “Oh,” he said. “I'm sorry, I didn't notice you're back.”

Closing his book, Charles looked at his friend. He smiled. “I haven't been back for long,” he allowed. “How has your day been?”

Erik, too, shut his book. He sighed. It had been two days since Charles had seen him the last time, but he looked like it had been years. “The weather is getting worse,” he just said, as if that was any explanation at all. Charles looked out the window. The sun was shining bright outside, in a blue sky dotted with a handful of white clouds. “Tell me what you did today, I need to get my mind off those things.”

Charles shook his head with another smile. Sometimes he wondered in which decade Erik lived. He wasn't even sure whether or not they lived in the same century. He still told Erik about his day at the university, about his colleagues and students, what he'd had for lunch and what he bought for dinner. Erik let him go into details about the frozen pizza, like he hadn't seen a pizza before. Eventually, Erik's contributions to the talk went beyond nods and monosyllabic words. He started asking a few questions, and, like every time, they made Charles wonder how Erik couldn't know of certain things. Then, at the same time, he just as often asked about things Charles had never heard of before and had to explain.

“So,” Charles asked eventually. The sun had long since set. “What happened to you today?”

Erik sighed. He had taken up the book again and was now fiddling with it. “They wouldn't sell to me when I went out to buy groceries,” he mumbled.

“What?!” Charles exclaimed before he could get a hold of himself. “Why?”

Erik shrugged, in a way that was supposed to mean 'How would I know?' but translated to Charles as 'I know why but I would never tell you.' “It happens from time to time, no need to worry,” Erik said. “I went to another place instead. That's it.”

And with that, Charles could tell, this topic was over.

“Can you tell me more about those trees you're currently studying?” Erik said after a while. Charles did, but he could tell Erik was in no mood for conversations anymore. Before long, Erik picked up his book and excused himself for the night. Charles didn't watch him leave. The one time he had, Charles hadn't been able to stop himself from flinching.

“...did you know, back in the 19th century, there lived more than 20 people in a flat this size,” Erik asked out of the blue one day. He was standing at the window in the living room, the only one Charles had ever seen him look at, despite there being another one.

Charles, who had just been cleaning old tea mugs away, put the one he had been holding down again, and blinked at him. He hadn't even noticed Erik before. “No, I didn't,” admitted Charles. “Was that during the Industrial Revolution?”

Erik nodded. He had yet to turn. “From the 1870s to the Great War,” he said.

Charles raised an eyebrow at the last term. “The Great War,” he repeated.

“Don't you know what that was?” Erik scoffed.

“Of course I do, it's just... I haven't heard it called that very often,” Charles crossed his arms in front of his chest. He had yet to figure out what it was with Erik's mood today. “It's the 1930s for you, isn't it?”

Erik merely responded with a noncommittal sound.

Charles waited. It was Erik's turn now, for all he was concerned. He sat down. Sometimes it could take Erik a long while to answer the simplest questions. But Charles had no plans for the rest of the day. That meant he had all the time to wait for Erik to come around.

“Which year is it for you?” Erik asked, still staring out the window.

Charles bit his lip. He wasn't sure whether or not he should tell Erik. He was, after all, the one living in the future, from where Erik was standing. “Later,” he said, very carefully.

Erik huffed. “I figured as much. How much later? In decades, if you don't want to tell me.”

“Eighty years,” said Charles, very slowly.

Erik let out a slow breath. “And you tell me the term Great War doesn't get used much?” He shook his head. “I don't even want to know why.”

“So you understand that I won't answer you any questions about what... will happen?” Charles leaned forward. Never before had he felt as tense talking with Erik.

“Of course.” Erik rested his forehead against the cold glass of the window. “If I'm honest, I don't even want to know.”

Charles let out a breath he hadn't know he had been holding. If Erik had asked any more questions, he wasn't sure if he wouldn't have let some answers slip. “Has something happened again?” he asked instead. He got up and took a few cautions steps towards Erik. If he could, he would like to offer all the comfort Erik would accept.

“My uncle wants to leave the country with his family,” he sighed. “I understand why, it's just... my parents aren't too happy with it. They want to leave too, I know. They just don't want to believe it's necessary yet. 'Maybe things will get better again.'” The last words were practically spat out.

Charles clenched his teeth. He had no idea how to respond to that. Things would get better, he could see that just by looking outside, but then again...

“You're aware that no answer is an answer in its own right?” Erik murmured. “I can't even see your reflection in the window, but when I turn around you're there. How do I know you're even real?”

Startled by the swift change of topic, it took Charles a few heartbeats to find an adequate reply. “I could ask you the same,” Charles sighed. “The first time I saw you, I swore I thought I'd gone mad. Started to project because I was lonely. And then you walked through a wall and I was about to call an exorcist. My sister still tells me to do that, by the way.”

That pulled a small smile on Erik's face. “Maybe you should. Who knows? I could be a poltergeist.”

“You don't act like you were,” Charles replied, with a security he didn't feel.

“Maybe I forgot,” Erik sighed again. “To be fair, on some days, I think you're the only one that still makes sense in my life anymore.”

“I wish I could help you, my friend,” Charles sighed.

Now, finally, Erik turned to look at Charles. His expression was unreadable but his eyes were warm, sparkling with a smile that couldn't reach his lips. He must be in his thirties, Charles suddenly thought. He could be older from his looks, but Charles very much doubted it. “You already do, my friend,” Erik repeated the endearment. Charles noted that he didn't sound as sarcastic as he had expected him to.

Erik reached for something that wasn't there anymore, a shelf maybe, and suddenly, there was a chessboard in his hands. “As long as I hold it, you can see it, right? I can see the books you're reading and not much else, I don't even know what your living room looks like, besides the couch. What I wanted to say is, do you play?” he asked.

Charles nodded. “I love to,” he said, a gentle smile playing around his lips. “Though I might be a little bit rusty. It's been a while since I last played. Should I tell you my moves? I doubt I can touch it.”

Erik indicated the floor. “Let's sit down and play, then.” He had cheered up a few degrees, Charles could tell, though his face was still stern and spoke of worries. Erik set the pieces so Charles had white and then waited. He moved the piece Charles told him to and then made his own move. Like this, they played until they were too tired to continue.

Charles didn't sleep well that night, despite his exhaustion.

“...you really need to check what's going on with you,” Raven told him over the phone in one of their weekly calls. He hadn't been counting, but he imagined he'd heard this about a thousand times, by now. “Or your flat. Do you still see that guy?”

“Raven, I told you, his name is Erik,” Charles sighed. “And of course I do. We play chess.”

There was a long moment of silence. “You play chess. With a ghost. Or your imagination,” she repeated. Her voice was flat, a sign Charles had learned meant he was in grave danger. “Are you fucking insane?”

Charles took a deep breath. He really wished Raven would understand him. “What's the problem with that? It's not like he's ever attacked me. Or hurt me, for that matter.” He was sitting in his bedroom where he kept his computer ever since he'd met Erik. He had been thinking about googling Erik for a while now, but hadn't come up with any way to go about that search. He couldn't just enter his address and the name Erik and random years between 1930 and 1938, though he was sure he could narrow the years down to 33' to 36'.

“The problem is, that either you have gone insane or you're talking to ghosts and both options terrify me,” Raven explained.

“I promise you, Raven, I'm not insane,” Charles said. “And I'm sure there's a reason why I can talk to Erik which has nothing to do with him being dead. He doesn't seem dead to me.”

Silence again. Then, “Did you try to check the citizen registration for your place?”

“I did, but they weren't very helpful. I need at least his last name to find out more without asking him.” Charles rubbed a hand over his face. “It would be so much easier if I could just ask him.”

“Why don't you? Just ask him for his last name, don't tell him why, just ask because you're curious,” Raven suggested.

Charles ruffled his hair. “I could do that,” he allowed. “But what if he asks me something in return. Or... what if I find his name in one of those lists?”

“What lists?”

“What if I find out he died in the camps?” Charles explained. “How should I... How could I keep quiet about it if I knew?”

He could hear Raven swallow. “Do you have any reason to assume that?” she asked.

“I'm pretty sure he's Jewish, even though I didn't ask,” Charles said, replaying his conversations with Erik in his mind. It would fit. And explain his relatives leaving the country. He just hoped they went further than the Netherlands or France.

“Fuck, Charles, why do you always find weird trouble? You're like a freaking magnet!” Charles could picture his sister throwing her hands in the air in exasperation at him. “Please don't alter his life, just, don't. Remember Back to the Future. Remember it all the time. If you're right and the he you're talking with is still alive. Who knows what he might do differently.”

“I know,” Charles sighed. “I wish I could, you know? He's a friend by now—don't say anything. And I really really want to warn him. If I knew it wouldn't change a thing but only for him to live, I would tell him in a second.”

Raven sighed. “I assumed as much.” She paused. Even over the phone, Charles could almost hear her think. “How about this. You tell me his name. I find out as much as I can about him. And when you don't see him anymore, I will tell you everything.” She paused again. “If he's still alive, I call you immediately. So you could meet him.”

“Raven! He would be more than a hundred years by now!” Charles protested. “I doubt he'd even remember!”

She laughed. “You never know. You tend to leave lasting impressions on people, dear brother.”

“Oh shut up!” Charles protested. He knew that second he was in for some teasing, but the serious part of their call was over with that.

Charles was setting up his chess board when Erik walked through a wall. Charles was by now sure that at some point they had changed the location of the interior walls in the flat. Erik was still wearing his coat and a hat, both dark with rain. It hadn't rained all day for Charles but Erik looked doused. He was in a foul mood, Charles could tell without seeing his friends face. Instead, he took in the man's clothes more closely.

Neither the hat nor the coat were in a good shape. The elbows of the coat were closer to being threadbare than anything else. It looked years old. And, Charles noticed with some relief, there wasn't a star on his chest. Yet.

Erik cursed. He took off his hat and coat and put them down somewhere Charles couldn't see. Then he started pacing the room. Charles watched him for a while without saying anything. Erik would just snap at him and use him as a vent and Charles wasn't ready to have that. He couldn't fight with Erik, in case he said something stupid like “I want you to move away, right this fucking instant, to the US, Shanghai, I don't care just somewhere safe”.

Eventually, Erik stopped. He dropped hard into his favorite armchair, slumped, and buried his face in his hands. He still didn't say anything. If he'd even noticed Charles presence. Charles sat down the chessboard. He wondered whether or not he should leave. Finally, he opted on getting up at least.

“Don't go,” Erik croaked. He sounded broken. “Please, don't go now.”

Wondering what had happened to devastate his friend like this, Charles sat back down on the couch. “Do you want to talk about it?” he said carefully.

Erik shook his head, then, he nodded. Finally, he settled for a shrug. “They left yesterday,” he said flatly. “I don't know what I should be talking about.”

“They...?” Charles wondered, before he understood. Erik's uncle and his family. “Oh,” he just made. “Didn't they tell you when they would leave?” Erik just shook his head. “How did your parents react?”

“My father got mad, cursed him and calling them rash and too hasty.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “My mother didn't react at all. That was the worst about it. I'm sure, secretly, she's glad they left. I know she thought about leaving herself. Or she wants me to go too, I'm not sure. She always tells me there's no reason to stay here, with no work and everything that's going on.”

Charles let him ramble. He didn't know what to say. All he could say for comfort were things he couldn't tell Erik. So he had to content himself with listening. He still worried his lower lip between his teeth. A fact not missed by Erik.

“You have an opinion about this, haven't you?” For a moment, he seemed hungry for an answer. Then, he leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes. “It doesn't matter. I just...” He shook his head. “Should I tell my mother to go or not?”

Charles swallowed. He couldn't. He shouldn't. And yet he caught himself telling his friend, “If she really wants to go, you shouldn't try to keep her here.”

Erik looked at him, his face unreadable. “Is that advice based on what you know or what you would advise any friend?” he asked.

“A friend. Sorry, I won't give you that first kind of advice and you know it,” Charles lied. He could only hope that this advice wouldn't change a thing.

Erik merely nodded, the shadow of desperation crossing over his features. “I just wish I knew what to do. I don't want to leave my home. Where should I even go? This is where I lived all my life, where I belong. It just doesn't feel like it anymore.”

Charles stared at the wall behind Erik, careful to keep his face blank and unmoving. He was afraid all the answers Erik was seeking could be read in his face like in an open book. “W-what's your last name, anyway, Erik?” he asked, because he suddenly remembered the conversation with Raven. He was desperate for a change of topic. Even if he knew it, by now, Charles was sure he wouldn't want to know Erik's fate. Not while they still talked. Imagining to know Erik would die in a few months or even years, under desperate, inhuman circumstances, and not telling him was too painful. Ignorance, Charles decided then, was bliss.

“Why?” Erik scoffed again. “So you can learn what becomes of me? I doubt even you could. It's almost a century between us, what should be left of me?” He shook his head, self-depreciating. “It's Lehnsherr. Such a stupid name, don't you think? Like my family ever was allowed to be that important.”

Charles looked his friend up and down. Time for a change of mood, he decided, if that was at all possible. “I don't know,” he mused. It was an act, and a bad one at that, but he had to try. “I do think you would look rather fetching in an armor, mounted on your steady war horse, ready to defend your country and king.”

Erik's eyes widened, before he could get a hold of himself. He shook his head. Then, he lowered it. Charles long since knew that this was how Erik tried to hide smiles from him. Not that they ever showed on his face, but Charles had grown quite good at reading Erik's moods from his eyes. “I have no idea what to make of you, honestly,” Erik finally said.

“Take me as you get me, then,” Charles said. He picked up the chessboard again. “One distraction from dire life at a time.”

Erik shook his head again. He muttered something under his breath, which sounded distinctly like “Unbelievable”. None the less, he got up and over to where Charles had slid off his couch and sat down opposite to him.

They played for a few hours, until Erik said he couldn't possibly stay up any longer, but thanks for taking his mind off things and moved to take his leave. At the door, or where the door was for him at least, he paused.

“Charles,” he called out. Charles looked up from where he'd stared at the chessboard. “If something were to happen... No. I... Charles, do you remember the loose floorboard under your bed? You described it to me once, when you told me you had the carpet the previous owner had taken out and discovered old wooden floorboards under it. They're the same as I have. And... I know now which one it is. I think, at least, because I loosened it. If... if we don't see each other for a while, look beneath it, will you?”

Confused, Charles nodded. He had only mentioned the floorboard as something he should probably fix at some point. He'd never thought to look under it. Pleased with the nod, Erik left, without looking back another time.

Weeks passed. Charles made a point of spending as much time in his living room as he could after two days without a word from Erik. It didn't help. Either, Erik was avoiding him on purpose, which was Charles hoped but couldn't quite believe, or something had happened. He didn't dare to look Erik up just yet. He had even lied to Raven about not getting his last name when she called him later that week.

He moved his bed when he couldn't take it any longer. It took him a while to rearrange the furniture in his bedroom so he could. The desk was in his way and then he noticed he had to move the nightstand, too, if he wanted to gain full access to the loose board. He didn't want to fish for whatever Erik would have hidden there.

It took him more than a little effort to pull the loosened board free in the end. He was glad he'd moved everything or he'd probably failed to get it removed. The space under it was deeper than Charles would have thought, even though the hollow space was only little longer than it was wide.

Inside, there was a leather bound, worn book. Charles took it out, only to find a small, dusty cassette below. He took that one out as well. Brushing off the dust and dirt, it turned out to be the chessboard Erik had always used. Charles bit his lips, as he pressed it to his chest briefly, before he went on to leaf through the book.

He didn't even need to read it to know what he'd just found. The writing in it looked so very much like Erik he had no doubt who'd written it, even though there was no name in it anywhere. As he started reading, he noticed that Erik had never put down any names, only written of 'mother' and 'father' and 'uncle' and so on. Reading on, Charles eventually stumbled over one entry that simply stated Erik had thought he'd seen somebody in his living room. Then, a few days later, Erik had started writing about a 'he' and Charles knew he meant him by that. That had been back in January, weeks before Charles had even noticed Erik. Just how long had that connection existed without his knowledge.

The first entries about 'him' were only sparse and with a lot of time between, but by April, when they had started talking, the entries became more and more frequent. Even on days when they hadn't talked or seen each other in a while, Erik wrote about him.

It wasn't much more than footnotes at first, some things Erik noted down with the rest of what he'd experienced during the day. More than once, Charles had to put it down and pause, just stare at the wall for a while without even thinking so he could go on. He had know how things were back, had known in a vaguest sense. But reading it now, reading about what happened to a dear friend, left him shaking more than once. And as the weeks had passed, things had gotten worse and worse and...

Suddenly, the entries about that stopped. Erik still wrote about his parents and their fears, but he stopped writing about his days, if he was not visiting his parents, who lived a bit outside the city from what Charles could gather. However, Erik didn't stop writing completely. He'd just shifted his focus.

He'd started writing about Charles and their meetings instead.

Charles was too absorbed in his reading material, he didn't hear the phone when it first rang. Nor did he hear skype announcing a call. Only when the phone rang after he'd finished reading, he noticed it, just barely able to answer it when he saw it had been Raven calling. Four times.

“Charles, finally, you had me worried,” were the first words out of Raven's mouth when he'd accepted the call.

Charles couldn't answer. It was impossible to talk normal to Raven now. Erik's words in the diary were still at the front of his mind.

“Charles?” Raven asked. “Is everything alright?”

It took Charles all the strength he had left to answer that. No, nothing was alright. “I found his diary,” he murmured. “I found it where he told me it would be. I haven't seen him in more than two weeks, Raven! And that's where the diary stopped.”

Raven remained silent. The pause was long enough for Charles to get off the floor and stretch his stiff limbs. He put the diary and the chessboard on his bed like they were something sacred. Then, as he hadn't had anything to drink in hours and felt like he needed it, he went into the kitchen to fix himself a cup of tea. The phone remained close to his ear.

“Have you thought about looking him up?” Raven ventured eventually. “It had his last name in it, hadn't it?”

“Yes, it had,” Charles lied, so he wouldn't have to tell her that he lied before. “But I haven't. Raven, I just finished reading it.”

“Tell me his name,” she demanded. “I'm sitting at my computer anyway and you don't sound like you're in any shape to do it yourself. Do you want me to come over?”

“Raven, there's an ocean between us!” Charles protested. He didn't tell her not to come. From what he had read in the diary, he needed a hug. And time alone to think. Much of both if possible.

“Last name, or I get to the airport now,” she said.

“Lehnsherr.” The name was as much a sign of Charles capitulation as was the sigh that followed. He then spelled the name to Raven, too, in case she hadn't gotten it the first time.

While she searched, Charles sat down with his tea and drank it. Raven chattered with him while he was at it, but he didn't feel like talking to her. There was too much on his mind to talk.

And from one moment to the next, Raven fell silent.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“The last entry. Is it from 1936?” Raven asked.

Confused, Charles confirmed that. “Late October that year.”

“Oh, good,” Raven sighed. “From what I can find, he seems to have caught a ship over to the US around that time.”

“What?” Charles gasped. His head was spinning with relief. So, the worst hadn't happened.

“I got his bio here, it fits and I doubt it could be anybody else,” she said. “I send you the link, you can read it for yourself. Looks like his daughter is still alive, too.”

“His daughter?” Charles' blood ran cold. Living relatives. That meant, however he put it, he should tell them about the diary he'd found. It was only right and proper.

He didn't want to send the diary off to a stranger. It didn't feel like it was right.

Charles hung up on Raven then, telling her he needed time alone to read the bio and look about for himself. She let him be, although she made him promise he would call her should he need anything at all.

In the end, Charles did send the diary to Erik's daughter, after a lot of e-mails and a handful of calls with the elderly woman. She only wanted to read it, too, she had told him, and let her children and grandchildren see it, perhaps. Charles wasn't as sad as he'd thought he would be. His consciousness reminded him, he should have told the woman about the other book Charles had found inside the chessboard, pressed into the narrow space above the white pieces.

Charles had laughed with tears stinging in his eyes when he'd seen that. White had always been his preferred color against Erik. He had then sat down. His legs felt like they were no longer able to support him.

In that little booklet, Erik had meticulously written down each and every chess match they'd ever played. It was hard to read it without smearing the ink with his tears. It still was, even though he had read it back to front multiple times by now.

The matches took up about half the book. The other half were stories. Page and page was filled with drafts and short stories and even what looked like part of a novella. Erik had never told him he wrote.  

Charles had to read through a couple of the before he understood why the stories were in there as well, although Erik had started the book from both sides. Some of the stories were based off things he had said or what they had talked about. But those weren't the stories Charles cried over, not even the first time he'd read them.

What had gotten to him, was how with time, Erik had woven characters with Charles' traits into his stories. Charles could just picture Erik writing these, the expression of fond concentration like the one he wore when they had been playing chess.

Charles just wished he would be able to talk to his friend one more time.


	2. Chapter 2

_To Charles, October 24th, 1936_

_I hope you know how much I enjoyed your company. I wished we could keep up our acquaintanceship, but I doubt it'll work wherever I am going. My mother is finally convinced we should leave. I bought us tickets for a ship to America. I hope we'll be able to build us a new life there. I will miss you. The conversations with you were what gave me life this past year. I'm sad we'll never be able to meet in person. If I had just one wish, I would want to use it to hold your hand once, just once. Is that a funny thing to long for? Anyway, our train will be off soon. I can’t take much with me, but at least I can get my mother away from this. I leave you the diary because I want you to have it, as a memory. I don't want to take it with me. It's safer there, under the floorboard. And I can't imagine a single person it would be better off with._

 


End file.
